1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for the automatic orientation of digital images in an editing environment.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the field of photography, it is becoming increasingly common for both professional and amateur photographers to choose a digital means of image capture and storage over more conventional means. One of the advantages of digital image storage is the ease with which users can edit images, and furthermore, while professional image editing software may have higher system requirements, most home computers manufactured in recent years are capable of hosting adequate image editing packages. This has meant that new levels of simplicity and flexibility have been introduced to users spanning the range from amateur home user to studio based professional, and accordingly, software designers continue to add value and improvements in functionality.
In prior art image-editing environments, images are generally loaded into memory in landscape mode (i.e. long axis in the horizontal plane) by default, hence, one editing procedure that must be carried out by users is the re-orientation of images; that is, arranging images shot in portrait mode (i.e. images that should have their long axis in the vertical plane but are effectively viewed on their sides due to the standard landscape mode default), so that they are, put simply, the correct way up.
For the amateur with a limited number of images to process, the need to carry out the above mentioned procedure might be merely inconvenient, however, for the professional the task of correcting a large number of images becomes an onerous prospect, and in both cases is a task of which users may reasonably expect could be carried out by automatic processing of the image.
There is reasonable need then, by way of a refinement to an image-editing environment, for a facility by which the orientation of images is automatically corrected if required.